There are all kinds, but the monthly format is favored to such an extent that everything converges toward this pattern. I myself have been self employed for a long time - I don’t need to be paid monthly and a lot of people still prefer to make monthly payments.
ETA: No matter how the payments are made, the authorities will require people to report them per month. I think commercial banks may use similar procedures.
One of my nephews is a mathematician. He likes to “take a dump on company time” and calculate what he earned during those minutes. So, he thinks of his income per minute.
UK, former US here. I know the yearly amount (before bonus) to within about a thousand. But in the UK things like online mortgage or tax calculators will ask for the monthly amount.
Per hour. How much total money divided by how much actual work done.
American. I think annually. However, I get paid monthly, which I love. So much easier to budget when you get one big check to compare monthly expenses to. So in that sense, monthly is an important number to me.
I guess it would depend on the purpose. For long term goals (house buying, or other big purchases) I think in yearly terms. For my everyday, i think more in monthly dollars.
Oh I’ve done that math too for that exact activity. Also when thinking about paying for anything that might save some time or money. E.g. going out of my way for cheaper gas rarely makes sense.
When it comes to me personally, it’s strictly biweekly as that’s how I’m paid, but like other posters from the US (I’m in Canada) normally I think in terms of ‘per year’ as that’s how most statistics are reported.
My wife, on the other hand is retired so her pension is paid monthly so that’s the terms we think of.
I have never heard anything except per year, for salaried workers.
Once I had a friend who told me he just got a thirty-cent raise, and I blinked a couple of times before I realized he was talking about “per hour.”
My answer may not be helpful, because I use the the old desktop version of You Need A Budget, which they have discontinued in favor of a web version that attaches itself to your bank account like a leech and drains it at a constant rate. Having bought the program for a lump sum back in 2013 I felt no inclination to start paying for it over and over again forever, so I have declined to ‘upgrade’.
I do not know that the old YNAB 4 app can be acquired legally anymore. Sorry.
[/slight hijack]
I personally think of my single yearly expense in the same category I do my oil changes - an infrequent expense that I don’t bother to predict or even think about until the bill shows up in the mailbox.
Yeah, of course. This seems like such an obvious point. It also depends on the kind of work one does.
Otherwise, the poll is not very useful.
This. I’m paid biweekly as well, so most months there are 2 checks, but a few get 3. I know my annual salary because that’s how initial starting salaries and raises are determined- they tell you that you make X dollars per year when you start, and then the raises are always defined as a percentage of that- a 3% raise is 103% of your current salary.
And I know what I make each pay check. Monthly, I’d probably just divide my salary by 12 and assume that was it.
I can dig it! My wife uses the web-based YNAB, but I could never bring myself to use it because of the recurring subscription. Her using it, led me to another point I’m still “adjusting” to. . .
I run Trip-nomics (my science of economics) on a monthly spreadsheet basis, split up in half-months (24 periods, executed on the 1st and 15th of each month). But. . . I get paid every two weeks (26 periods). The difference is an ‘extra paycheck’ every six months or so, which seems nice, but can be confusing if I’m not on top of things.
On my spreadsheets, I have “Planned” and “Actual” columns. I plan for a semi-or-monthly amount, normally higher than the actual, so any fluctuations are covered. Those monthly spreadsheets also have placeholders for any annual expenses (i.e. property taxes). Any difference in my favor goes into a savings “slush fund” for either the annual stuff, or the unexpected.
Tripler
I project expenses higher than their actuals, and am able to live within the budget; sometimes that means rice-and-beans for dinner, or beans-and-rice if I want some variety.
Per month, because that’s how often I pay bills (with the exception of a couple of utilities that bill bi-monthly). The only time I think about how much I make per year is if I’m applying for a new mortgage or something – which doesn’t happen very often. I am glad I finally got my property taxes and homeowners insurance on escrow with my mortgage, so I don’t have to save up for those and then write huge checks every year.
So my attitude is: how much money is left over this month after I pay bills, how much of that might be discretionary, how much might I be able to spend on non-essentials?
I know what I make per hour, I know what my weekly net amounts are. My bill payments are structured around each pay period and I pay them in the same sequence every month. Sometimes on the payment date and sometimes early depending on the particular date each payday falls on.
In the unusual event I tell people what I make I’d either answer in hourly or annual, depending on which one I figured the person I was talking to was more acquainted with. If annual they’d either get the (rate x 2040) answer, last year’s actual or this years anticipated income, depending on the context.
I build up all expenses whether they are annual, quarterly, monthly, etc, so that there are funds available when the bill comes up.
I’m using the new YNAB. You know you can have multiple budgets on one account right? There’s nothing stopping you from using your wife’s account to run your own budget.
I like YNAB, though it has a couple of flaws. I particularly like the way it can make me feel poor even though I might have many months worth of cash in the bank. I know a budgeting program is good for me when it makes me carefully consider my discretionary expenses. Its main flaw, IMHO, is that it does not forecast. You can use it for forecasting but its not designed for it and it is not in line with the “YNAB method”. I often contemplate using my own database to do my budgeting instead of YNAB. I use spreadsheets on occasion, in a “quick n dirty” way, to plan my finances for a year.
Public school employees in Georgia get paid monthly. One learns to budget quickly when the pay is monthly and they hold the first paycheck for a month. That meant it was two months before getting paid for the first time! They quit the first month’s hold back in the nineties, thankfully. Somehow that first year, I was able to save enough by Christmas to go back home and enjoy the holiday. Later that winter I was able to afford a “new” used car for $600 with a credit union loan.
I’ve been retired for ten years now, but the monthly budget concept is still quite ingrained.
In practical terms, I think in biweekly terms, because that’s how often I get paid (just double that for a month). In comparisons to others’ pay, I think in yearly terms, because that’s the most common bottom-line metric.
I just have a slush fund or two that I stuff unallocated money in. It serves to cover any surprise/forgotten expenses that pop up.
I’m pretty sure I use YNAB wrong, what with those slush funds that I keep around. I actually don’t specifically allocate money until the start of the month, at which point I move the max expected amount to be spent on each category into that category, adding more if needed and draining it out at the end of the month so all non-slush categories end up zeroed. Which means that I don’t even use what little forecasting functionality YNAB has. (Which is just to allocate money you already have; you can’t preallocate money you haven’t got without sending some category negative.)
The upshot of the above is that while I think of my income in biweekly terms, I think of my expenses in monthly terms, rather explicitly. And of course the two three-check months are always welcome; they swell my slush funds rather impressively, until I get around to blowing all the surplus on something irresponsible and frivolous of course.
I always think of annual salary per year. I’ve occasionally will figure out the hourly rate but I definitely don’t think in those terms. At my last job, where the annual bonus definitely mattered, I’d adjust mentally around fall when the important people started dropping hints about the size of bonuses.
If I was still at my last job, I would have mentally adjusted down to zero bonus like 2010.